Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived

A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?

Update: seemingly not

Update: Oh yeah!

Friday, September 05, 2008

And meanwhile, in Darfur

More chaos and black comedy with the (thankfully successfully resolved) hijacking of an internal flight to Libya by two members of SLA/Nur. Interesting in that they were actually trying to hijack the plane to Paris and demanding to speak to Abel Wahid Mohammed al-Nur. As so often in this conflict, it is hard to get one's analysis above the level of "what the fuck". I've heard of having stretched communication lines and Patton's "sense of the commander" doctrine, but to have your troops reduced to hijacking planes to talk to you seems like taking a good thing too far.

Meanwhile, scenes from the ongoing tragedy of the refugee and IDP camps; Sudanese Army now carrying out massacres in refugee camps, which is a new development - obviously disgusting, equally obviously a predictable result of the ongoing militarisation of the camps (I can't find the official Sudanese Government press release on the Kalma massacre, by the way, but it really was a blood-boiling piece of mendacious crap; although it's pretty clear that rebel troops are using the camps as bases to some extent this does not excuse the murder of civilians).

And just to depress us even more, food riots in a refugee camp (actually a camp for Chadian refugees from ethnic conflicts in Eastern Chad, who have fled to a relatively peaceful part of West Darfur), who have had their rations cut because aid convoys are being attacked by SLA/Nur rebels.